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Monday, April 30, 2012

When erstwhile administration ally Supreme Court Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg describes the president's signature initiative as needing either
"a wrecking operation … or a salvage job" by the Court, and Justice
Antonin Scalia ventures that merely having to read the health reform law would
violate the Constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishment,"
Obamacare seems poised to perish.

While commentator Jonah Goldberg rightly argues for a
conservative, originalist respect by the Court for the Constitution and
Congress, the landmark case should also pave the way for a more conservative,
measured approach by Congress.

Congress should refocus on carefully and systematically enacting
pragmatic and popular solutions. Ramp up competition and tamp down costs by
allowing consumers to purchase insurance beyond state borders, as with car
insurance. Provide fiscally sustainable safety nets for the poor and high-risk
pools for patients caught in financially crippling health crises. Focus on
cutting rampant fraud and waste in Medicare while providing reasonable
reimbursement rates to enable physicians to treat Medicare patients.

A systematic, pragmatic approach to health care reform and
patient access also means stanching the hemorrhage of physicians from medicine,
by enacting reasonable malpractice reform and protecting the conscience rights
of physicians who follow the life-affirming principles of the Hippocratic oath.

The Jacobinic health care revolution based on radical ideology
and rammed through Congress with backroom deals, deceptive accounting schemes
and kickbacks has failed. Now Congress should democratically enact popular,
prudent and pragmatic health care reform.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Deploying the logic that led to the demise of the health-care
reform schemes of his former Clinton clients, political adviser Mark Penn suggests if the Supreme Court cans Obamacare, the president could spin the
decision as political, incentivize states to adopt the individual mandate the
Court considered unconstitutional and use the defeat to "actually move him
closer to reelection."

Like the president, Mr. Penn ignores the plain fact that
Americans hate government mandates.

Most Americans reject the Obamacare mandate to buy health
insurance because it violates our fundamental notions of individual choice and
free enterprise. Many Americans likewise disapprove the Obamacare mandate to
force even religious objectors to subsidize controversial contraceptives--a
coercion incongruously defended under the guise of increasing access to a
ubiquitous product that the president says 99 percent of women already use.

As this administration continues its audacious attempts to usurp
the Constitution and mandate the redistribution of income from political
opponents to its political base, more and more Americans are enraged by the
recognition that "hope and change" has morphed into "kneel and
yield."

Since the administration and its ideological allies apparently
have no contingency plan for replacing Obamacare, Congress finally should come
together to craft a pragmatic and measured approach to health care reform that
doesn't involve taking over the world.

Assuming the Court declares Obamacare unconstitutional, cooler
heads in Congress can focus on those reforms most likely to garner enough
bipartisan agreement for passage. Start by ramping up tracking and enforcement
programs to cut Medicare fraud and waste. Provide compassionate, fiscally
sustainable safety nets for the most needy, such as indigent patients and those
caught in health care crises not covered by insurance. Tamp down costs by
increasing competition and allowing patients to purchase insurance plans beyond
state borders, as with car insurance. Stanch the hemorrhage of doctors from
medicine by reasonably reforming malpractice lawsuits, slashing paperwork and
bureaucratic meddling, and clarifying First Amendment conscience protections
for health care professionals.

The jacobinic health care revolution has failed. It is time now
to reform health care democratically with careful, considerate compromise on
the pragmatic principles that most Americans support.

Reading the mainstream media obituaries of Chuck Colson, one would think the former Nixon aide's life ended in disgrace after he essentially sentenced himself to prison for crimes related to a break-in at the office of a psychiatrist who leaked government documents. Somehow revenge trumps redemption for reporters intent on smearing a conservative leader--or worse, in their minds, a converted leader.
Beyond politics, the world outside the Church sometimes seems incapable of appreciating faith, grace and a life changed by Christ--probably because the admission of this reality would challenge assumptions of a godless existence in which man is master.
Michael Gerson writes a fitting tribute, excerpted below, to a changed man who exchanged hubris for humility:

Charles W. Colson — who spent seven months in prison for
Watergate-era offenses and became one of the most influential social
reformers of the 20th century — was the most thoroughly converted person
I’ve ever known.
Following Chuck’s recent death,
the news media — with short attention spans but long memories — have
focused on the Watergate portion of his career. They preserve the image
of a public figure at the moment when the public glare was harshest — a
picture taken when the flash bulbs popped in 1974.
...Chuck’s swift journey from the White House to a penitentiary ended a
life of accomplishment — only to begin a life of significance. The two
are not always the same. The destruction of Chuck’s career freed up his
skills for a calling he would not have chosen, providing fulfillment
beyond his ambitions. I often heard him quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
and mean it: “Bless you, prison, for having been in my life.”
...It is a strange feeling to lose a mentor — a sensation of being old and
small and exposed outside his shade. Chuck’s irrational confidence in my
21-year-old self felt a little like grace itself. The scale of his life
— a broad arc from politics to prison to humanitarian achievement — is
also the scale of his absence. But no one was better prepared for death.
No one more confident in the resurrection — having experienced it once
already. So my grief at Chuck’s passing comes tempered — because he was
Lazarus, and he lives.

Friday, April 20, 2012

"It's a choice between a wrecking operation…or a salvage
job" (see USA Today, "Despite thrust and parry, law not dead yet"). When Democrat-appointed Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
evaluates a Democrat president's signature initiative like that, you know the
health care law is hopelessly flawed.

Assuming the Court rejects the partisan ideological overreach as
unconstitutional, it will be time for Congress to come together on mutually
acceptable principles and begin to carefully craft pragmatic, measured reforms
rather than wholesale ideological government takeovers of medicine. Cooler
heads can prevail and pass reasonable reform by providing compassionate,
fiscally sound safety net provisions for the poor and those caught in health
crises; by increasing competition, allowing consumers to buy insurance across
state lines; by rooting out budget-busting corruption and Medicare fraud; and
by reforming malpractice, cutting paperwork and providing conscience
protections to stem the hemorrhage of physicians from medicine.

In a bipartisan, measured approach, no one will get everything
they want. And that will be a good thing.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Religious
freedom. From the days of the Pilgrims, America has provided a safe
haven--though with lamentable lapses--for the free exercise of
religion.

Recent
events have shown, however, that we can no longer take our religious
freedom and corresponding conscience rights for granted. Consider
that over the past three years, people of faith and conscience have
witnessed:

Thank youfor taking time to
put your values into action to protect the religious liberties we
hold dear.

P.S.
Besides using the links and information above to contact your
legislators, you can also learn more on conscience rights and
religious freedom issues at www.Freedom2Care.org. Visit
http//capwiz.com/f2c/mlm/signup to sign up for updates.

Monday, April 2, 2012

In an ostensibly conciliatory commentary about the need to
transcend "partisan divisiveness" and "incivility," Tom
Krattenmaker tars conservative Christians engaged in the public
square as "evangelical kingmakers," "mean-spirited, truth
demolishing," "partisan hacks" who are "fixated on
politics." (By significant contrast, an abortion lobbyist is a
"fighter for women's reproductive rights.")

Mr. Krattenmaker rightly advocates that even in the barroom-brawl
world of politics, Christians should remain Christ-like: charitable, humble,
temperate, truthful, forgiving. Yet the Prince of Peace also intriguingly
proclaimed that He "did not come to bring peace, but
a sword."

Political and faith leaders throughout history such as Abraham
Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ronald Reagan and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn have
fought for social justice and mercy by wielding a sharp-edged separation of
good and evil, a clear exposition of truth versus deception. The policy stances
our nation takes on issues like abortion, human trafficking, assisted suicide
and war accommodate no middle ground or prevarication; such policies lead to
either life or death, freedom or slavery for millions of individuals.